"Apple CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software - Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple's advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch; and iCloud, Apple's upcoming cloud services offering." Right-o.

Its not an acronym. I would be more impressed if it were, and not hate them so much. All I can come up with are drug references this morning. The devices really aren't this bad, I'm just not very creative this morning.

I want to use a free trial get my perfectly legal (well, at least in Germany .. ripped from digital radio) music "uploaded", so that I can download/rip it again in higher quality before I end the trial

There have been unofficial trickles of information on all three products over the last few months. iCloud is rumored to be a "digital locker" type service, not unlike Amazon's recently released cloud services for storing music.

Actually, when it comes to music, I think they should go the opposite way that Amazon went. Since every iOS user is pretty much guaranteed to have a PC or Mac with iTunes installed, and most probably have an internet connection that is on 24/7, why not just allow them to stream music from their own PC? If I've got an 8gb music collection and broadband internet, why the hell should I have to upload my music to the cloud before I can stream it?

So basically, if you're going to force your customers to have iTunes, why not make it actually do something useful?

oh god where to begin. I hate to break the bad news to you this way. yes most of the services we use could technically run peer to peer, free, unencumbered, independent of corporate control.

but no business is going to make money doing that, so no business is going to offer it. we could stream our own mp3s 10 years ago.

the whole point of companies running services on their servers is to make money by controlling it.

apple letting you stream from your computer rather than apple servers would be retarded (of apple). the more control they have, the more opportunities to make money they can create, the more money they make.

but no business is going to make money doing that, so no business is going to offer it. we could stream our own mp3s 10 years ago.

Technically yes, but as with Back to My Mac and other MobileMe stuff, Apple can provide a DyDNS-like function so regular users can always find their home network from the Internet. Dynamic IPs, NAT/firewall, and VPNs were always the tricky part.

the whole point of companies running services on their servers is to make money by controlling it.

apple letting you stream from your computer rather than apple servers would be retarded (of apple). the more control they have, the more opportunities to make money they can create, the more money they make.

I don't see what you mean. The whole reason Google wants all your information in the Cloud is so they can attach ads to it every time you access it. That has nothing to do with Apple's business model. They actually sell things to customers (rather than customers to advertisers), so they're more interested in getting you to buy a newer iOS device that supports the service and some songs to populate it with. Insisting that all the data live on their end would just be unnecessary overhead.

If Apple intends to exercise the same kind of control on the user data as they show control over the apps, don't be amazed if your data will be deleted for not agreeing to Apples (ever changing) rules ...

A company, that has shown so little respect for what a user wants to do with the devices he owns, should not be trusted with my data!

How about us early Mac adopters that established @mac.com email addresses. Three years later you had to pay $99 a year or you lost your email address. And that's when they were desperate for customers. Now that they are large and in charge, there is no saying how users can get burned.

I have seen many companies already doing that. Why only does Apple become an evil company? If you don't like it, don't use it. iDoubt I would use it either even though iLike my Mac and iPod Touch much.

But yet I want to see the keynote before doing any judgement on its usefulness or anything..